{"id":812,"date":"2014-05-16T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T08:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=812"},"modified":"2014-05-15T11:34:50","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T10:34:50","slug":"song-of-the-week-runaway-by-del-shannon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=812","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Week: &#8220;Runaway&#8221; by Del Shannon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.<\/p>\n<p>This is &#8220;Runaway&#8221; by Del Shannon:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_yIaelSVhyM\" width=\"295\" height=\"221\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This was a number one hit in 1961. It&#8217;s about as bleak as they come. As Bob Stanley writes in <em>Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: <\/em>&#8220;The lyric was beyond melancholy, filled with dread and paranoia; the runaway girl might not even be alive.&#8221; That chugging rhythm is great, and Max Crook is playing his homemade &#8220;musitron&#8221; which makes this (probably, maybe, I think) the first hit to use a synthesizer, or at least a synthesizer of sorts. The &#8220;why-why-why-why-why&#8221; is really what makes this song, though: the falsetto makes it sound like uncontrollable agony, curiously, in the same way that the Beach Boys would later use falsetto to create a sound of uncontrollable joy on song like &#8220;I Get Around.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Runaway%22%20by%20Del%20Shannon\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it. This is &#8220;Runaway&#8221; by Del Shannon: This was a number one hit in 1961. It&#8217;s about as bleak as they come. As Bob Stanley writes in Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: &#8220;The lyric [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Runaway%22%20by%20Del%20Shannon\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-week","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":814,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}